I'm tired of Ten O'Clock Charley. (MASH fans will get the
connection.) Charley is the twit that inevitably sends me 4-6 viruses
by email a day or two after my newsletter is published. My anti-virus
software picks them off like mosquitoes attacking a bug zapper. He
or she) must have subscribed using an autoresponder that is
programmed to send out the viruses according to a set schedule.
Maybe I'm just ready for a vacation, but I'm weary of the bad
behavior that is so commonplace on the Net.
I'm tired of deleting 150-200 spam emails daily.
I'm tired of students contacting me to ask how much I would charge
to write their term paper. Here's a tip, kids. If you want a helping
hand, you'll find one at the end of your wrist.
I'm tired of people sending me scathing emails because they're
confused by somebody else's pop-under ads that they think
originated at my site. Come to think of it, I'm even more tired of all
those pop-under windows in the first place.
I'm tired of web sites that hold me captive and won't allow me to use
the Back Button on my browser to return to where I started. Why do
designers do this? Do they believe that taking hostages will improve
their chances of making sales?
Those are my minor complaints. These are my major ones.
I'm irritated that I had to spend most of a morning adding coding on
my web pages to protect myself against Microsoft's Smart Tags. For
those who don't know, Smart Tag technology causes little icons to
appear beside certain key words on your web site. When visitors
click on the icons, they will be taken to another site possibly your
competitors. Microsoft has already included the technology in
Office XP, but has bowed to pressure and promised (?) not to add the
technology to Internet Explorer 6. To protect your pages from MS
Smart Tags, add this line to your Meta Tags:
I'm even more irritated by Ezula's TopText, which comes bundled
with KaZaA, a third party plugin for IE. KaZaA is a freely
distributed file- sharing program has been downloaded over 7 million
times in a month and a half. The bundled TopText uses Smart Tag
technology to hijack visitors from your site and send them elsewhere.
Advertisers purchase keywords. When the browser encounters that
keyword on your site, it underlines the word in yellow, then adds a
yellow highlight when the mouse hovers over it. Clicking on the
keyword takes your hard won visitors away and deposits them at the
web site of the advertisers who purchased the keyword.
I don't recommend you install this program yourself to experiment,
because it is inordinately difficult to remove afterwards. For more
information, visit this link:
Ongoing discussions at:
http://gethighforums.com/Forum10/HTML/001386.html
If you've already installed the software, removal instructions are at
this link:
http://www.whirlywiryweb.com/removeezula.htm
And lastly, I'm irritated by the six varieties of spyware that I
discovered installed on my computer without my knowledge. These
applications suck up computer resources, take up real estate on your
hard drive and slow you down while you're surfing. Worse, they
gather information (who knows what?) about yourself and your
surfing habits. The information is used for targeted advertising, or s
sold to companies that collect information on web users. Of the six
varieties I discovered on my computer, only one the free version
of Aureate Group Mail had been installed by myself. I had not
understood that it was spyware. This spyware had gone so far as
enmesh itself with the operation of my regular email client Eudora
Pro. To discover what spyware resides on your system, try the Ad
Tracker, freely available from LavaSoft at http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
Enough complaining for one day. Besides, it's almost time for Ten
O'Clock Charley.
About the Author
June Campbell
How to Write Business Plans, Business Proposals,
JV Contracts,Human Resource Package, More!
No-cost ebook "Beginners Guide to Ecommerce".
Business Writing by Nightcats Multimedia Productions
http://www.nightcats.com